ABOUT a thousand passengers on a southbound train on the Metro Rail Transit Line 3 were offloaded Friday afternoon as its wheels were “slipping or skidding,” officials of the Department of Transportation said.
The passengers had to get off at the Santolan Station in Quezon City around 4:40 p.m., with a replacement train arriving about 7 minutes later, DoTr officials said.
They said “flat spots” on the wheel caused the skidding that could be remedied by “preventive maintenance and replacement of wheelset components.”
The MRT only had eight trains running as of 5 p.m., the officials added.
The incident comes on the heels of Busan Universal Rail Inc., the former maintenance provider of the MRT 3, that the transportation department has no technical experts to maintain the rail system.
BURI noted that MRT 3’s engineers were hired on a contractual basis, “therefore are incapable [of rail maintenance operations] and lack a sense of accountability.”
